Artistic Polar Bear Challenge: 100 Ways In 100 Days. #54 - Warm Monochromatic

So here we are on the next leg of our bear-related journey, so let's join paws and continue our trek.  When I first dragged out and dusted off my art supplies a little over a year ago, I didn't know where I was headed, but I was determined to make a map to get me there anyway.  Left Brain insisted on having some analytical say before I turned Right Brain loose to mush paint onto any available surface.  With the Interweb and a library full of tomes to assist me, I set off to learn a thing or two.

When I first started my jaunt into artistic mind expansion, one of the things that made Left Brain bang it's proverbial head against the wall was color theory.  Or should I say, color theories.  There was the Triadic Color Wheel.  The Munsell Color Wheel.  Goethe's Color Triangle.  Ostwald's Color Wheel.   Bourges's Color Square.  CIELab's Standard Color Table.  And the list goes on.  Add to that things like simultaneous contrast and color opposition, and my eye began to twitch at just the thought of opening another art book.

Maybe it was time to approach this from a different angle.  So I began to examine favorite individual artists and the palettes they used.  Some used a very limited palette, some had more than fifty colors at the ready.  Some used black liberally, others swore that using black was akin to jettisoning the very essence of your artistic soul into an everlasting sulfurous hell.

Sigh.

If I learned anything our of all this, it's that an artist's color choices are a very personal thing.  Some employ highly chromatic colors, some use a muted palette to beautiful effect.  Some utilize earthy tones, some prefer soft pastels.  It's one of the myriad of things that define our personal artistic style.


So in an effort to create a route and direction on this map to Creative Someplace, I'm going to take the bear on a jaunt around the color wheel.  To keep things simple, we'll use the Triadic Wheel.

The first stop is the most basic: a monochromatic color scheme.  I utilized one of my favorite colors, Burnt Sienna, with the addition of white and black to achieve the desired values.

Warm Monochromatic Bear

Acrylic on paper

Like the gray value studies of yore, it felt freeing to have color take a back seat, and have the focus on value and brushstrokes.